Both for her own health problems and to help those similarly afflicted, Betty Ford spent a great part of her life in and around hospitals.

A month after her husband became president in 1974, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. Three months after the Ford family left the White House — and two days after her 60th birthday — she checked into the Long Beach Naval Hospital in California to kick her addictions to alcohol and prescription drugs.

Throughout, she was characteristically candid and upbeat.

When she awoke from her mastectomy, she immediately knew the lump on her breast had been malignant and her breast had been removed. The grim faces of her family gave it away. Her first words to them, as she recalls in her 1978 biography, “The Times of My Life”: “If you can’t be happy, please go away. I can’t bear to look at you.”

A few years later when she was in drug and alcohol rehab at Long Beach Naval Hospital, she said that after a week with no pain killers or alcohol, she shook so much that “I didn’t need an electric toothbrush.”

Mrs. Ford’s dependency on prescription drugs began when she was prescribed a pain-killer for a pinched nerve. Years after treatment, she looked back to describe herself as a “nice, dopey pill-pusher, sitting around nodding.”

Lifting deadly taboos

The way Mrs. Ford dealt publicly with both issues helped remove the societal taboos that surrounded them. And when she moved beyond her role as a patient, she became an advocate for women’s health.

One measure of Mrs. Ford’s success is in lives saved.

“Without Betty Ford, women would be dying in far greater numbers than they are now,” Zora Brown, founder of the Breast Cancer Resource Committee, said in the 2004 biography, “Betty Ford, Candor and Courage in the White House.”

Mrs. Ford leant her name to Spectrum Health for creation of the Betty Ford Diagnostic Breast Center, which gives women a quick turn-around time between mammogram and diagnosis. The center has six clinics in Grand Rapids, Kentwood and Rockford.

The Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage opened in 1982 and, as of 2006, had treated more than 75,000 women and men addicted to alcohol and/or drugs as well as their families Additionally, the Betty Ford Institute was created in 2006 to take the issue of addictions and treatment further.

“It is time now to formalize and focus our research, education and public policy initiatives,” Susan Ford Bales, chairman of the Betty Ford Center, said at the time.

Despite her reputation as a candid woman, Mrs. Ford had a bit of trouble being completely honest with herself regarding her alcoholism. She wrote in the final chapter of “The Times of My Life” that she didn’t realize she was an alcoholic until after she checked into Long Beach Naval Hospital for an addiction to prescription drugs.

At the time, she released a statement saying she was being treated for a dependency on pain killers.

COMPLETE COVERAGE

A week later, son Steven told a reporter his mom also was an alcoholic. It took Mrs. Ford five more days to realize that her son was right. Her addictions involved booze as well as pills.

“The reason I rejected the idea that I was an alcoholic was that my addiction wasn’t dramatic,” she wrote in the final chapter of “The Times of My Life,” released several months after rehab.

“So I forgot a few telephone calls. So I fell in the bathroom and cracked three ribs. But I never drank for a hangover, and in fact I used to criticize people who did. ... I’d never hidden bottles in the chandeliers or toilet tanks... There had been no broken promises and no drunken driving.”

In a 1978 editorial, The Washington Post praised her both for discussing her mastectomy and revealing her addictions.

“Whatever combination of emotional and psychological stress and physical pain brought her to this pass, she is, characteristically, determined to overcome it,” the Post wrote. “And she is unafraid and unembarrassed to say so.”

Soon after, Mrs. Ford admitted that she was afraid and embarrassed. “I’ve gone through every possible emotion, suffered every possible mood, loneliness, depression, anger, discouragement,” she wrote in 1978. “Serenity is hard won, but I’m making progress.”